Tenderness
by Talutha
Summary: Drabbles themed around the word "Tenderness" and all its applications.
1. Me And My Girl

Me And My Girl 

The clock in the corner showed that everyone else was out and about – thankfully nobody near death at the moment – and it was just the two of them there. It was rare that they should be alone together in The Burrow. He was making tea in the kitchen, while Molly's bespelled pots cleaned themselves beside him. She was curled into one of the overstuffed armchairs, her red hair contrasting sharply with the forest green velour of the cushions. She had a book open across her lap, and was peering intently at it. He supposed it was some romance novel. Her fingers, long and pale, twitched across the top of the page, then turned it. A small sigh escaped her.

He was almost overcome by the sudden rush of tenderness that that tiny sound evoked in him. She was so beautiful. And she was his.

"What's that you're reading, my love?"

He handed her a mug of tea. She turned it around before drinking, to avoid the chip in the rim.

"Some awful romance novel I borrowed from a friend. Its extremely silly."

He smiled at her through the steam from his tea. "Love isn't silly. Have I told you how I met your mother?"

She groaned. "Not again, dad! Please not again!"


	2. Bruised

Bruised 

He was fretting in his sleep. She could hear him from her bedroom. It sounded as though he were crying. She rose, slipped into her dressing gown and slipped down the stairs trying to be as quiet as possible.

"Boy!" she hissed at him through the small door. He did not reply or respond.

She opened the door to find him crumpled into a tight ball in the corner of the cramped space, damp and sleep rumpled, whimpering. She reached in and poked him into a groggy wakefulness. "Mum?" he murmured, then sighed and rolled over onto his pillow.

She went up the stairs and sat on the edge of her perfectly made bed, rumpling her Laura Ashley bedclothes just a little. She couldn't stand the sight of the boy. Every step taken and syllable uttered reminded her of what she had lost.

"That boy is nothing but trouble," she murmured.

He made her ache. He was that tenderness, that deep, sister shaped bruise that bled inside her every day, unseen.

"Put him in an orphanage then", her practical husband had grunted, peering at her over the edge of the evening paper.

Petunia had mumbled something about promises and family, and left it at that.


	3. Moving Pictures

**Moving Pictures**

Sometimes when all the others were asleep, Ron snuffling and Dean snoring, he would take out the creased photo from where he kept it, safely rolled up and tucked inside one of his shoes. He didn't need light to see it, he had looked at it so many times that he could imagine every plane of his father's brow, every hollow and curve of his mother's cheeks. He could see with his minds eye the tenderness in his mother's expression, the love in his father's eyes. He could scarcely remember them any other way now. He would pull the rolled up picture from his shoe, and snatch it quickly against his chest, diving beneath the covers again, and just lying there and holding it over his heart.

It was a long time since he had cried while he held them like this.

Instead he listened to the voices that his traitorous memory insisted on replaying over and over again… _Poor boy… so young to lose his parents…poor boy… so young to lose his parents… such a horrible thing that happened… oh, poor boy…_

They filled his head and he hated them. Because all he wanted to hear, and all he couldn't hear, were the words his mother was saying in the picture, the words that made her lips move silently, the words that he held close every night in the hopes that even if his ears couldn't hear them then maybe his heart could.

"We love you Neville. We love you so much."


	4. SleepSoft

**Sleep-Soft**

He loved her best – or the closest approximation he could manage – in the mornings when she stumbled, bleary eyed and sleep creased, from their bed. Still half asleep – never a morning person, ever – she would stumble across their suite into the water closet, where she would stay for the longest time imaginable and emerge clean and sleek and transformed.

It was the sleekness that had first attracted him – along with her pedigree and her wit – but now that he had had that sleekness for so many years, it was the moments of imperfection that he enjoyed now. Perhaps he enjoyed her moments of imperfection because he, and only he, ever saw them. They made her his, more than any vows or family alliances. The moments when, just before rising from between their silk sheets, carefully chosen to match exactly the colour of her hair, she would rub at her eyes and yawn. There was little tenderness between them now, less than there had been, and there had never been much. Some people were capable of great tenderness. They were not.

But if, by chance, he happened to brush against her before she got out of bed, her skin would be warm and sleep-soft, and he would look at her perfect face, marred by a crease from the pillowcase. Rarely she would smile at him, a small, almost embarrassed smile.

"Good morning, Lucius."


	5. Nearly Heartless

**Nearly Heartless**

"It's been so long since you came to see me," she said breathily. He paused in his stride to look at her where she lounged against the wall. He hadn't seen her when he had started up this corridor. Otherwise, to be perfectly honest, he may not have come this way.

He cleared his throat noisily.

"Well, you know," he said awkwardly, "Places to go, people to see, that sort of thing."

She regarded him, her eyes warm and shining, her fingers trailing almost carelessly over her ample bosom and down across her waist. He swallowed.

"I mean, I've been busy," he said again, his eyes riveted to every motion of her fingertips.

"I was beginning to think that you didn't love me anymore," she said after a moment. He sighed gustily.

"Madame, I hardly need remind you, I think, of last month's conversation. Any tenderness that may have existed between us is… well, its over."

The Fat Lady began to weep huge glistening tears that ran down her face and gathered in her amazing cleavage before spilling out onto the bodice of her dress.

"Oh Nick," she wept. "Oh Nick… I didn't think... I mean to say… Really?"

Nearly Headless Nick wished that he were completely headless so that he wouldn't have to see her misery.

"My dear Madame," he said gently. "Oh… my dear , dear Madame…"


End file.
